Piling Obrang Vidyo (POV XXI): Pulso! OMNIBUS REVIEW: The Beating Heart of Student Cinema

Sep 28

Written By Jessica Maureen Gaurano

Piling Obrang Vidyo (POV XXI): Pulso! OMNIBUS REVIEW: The Beating Heart of Student Cinema

Jessica Maureen Gaurano & Dave Jonathan Verbo September 02, 2025, 11:45 AM

Photo taken from the POV XXI Recap Video, *courtesy of Piling Obrang Vidyo’s Official Facebook Page.*

Now in its 21st year, Piling Obrang Vidyo (POV XXI): Pulso! continues its role of bringing together short films that stand as both a personal effort and a shared voice for the stories from their communities. This year’s selection shows how student filmmakers turn to cinema as a way to respond to the world around them. They use film to test ideas, to ask questions, and to picture lives different from their own. The films not only tell stories but also make sense of the forces that shape how people live.

Through this platform, student filmmakers found a space to bring their ideas before a larger audience. This year’s selection of short films showed a range of styles—story-driven pieces, documentaries, experimental, and even animation while staying true to POV’s commitment of keeping student cinema alive and visible. Through this year’s selection, POV XXI showed a care for voices still learning yet already certain of what they want to say. Here are the reviews for the films from the Collegiate and Senior High School categories:

Collegiate Category

Cemento
by Justine Borlagdan

Hailed as Piling Obra XXI’s Best Film, Justine Borlagdan’s film positions cement as a metaphor and paradox, embodying the conflicts between development and dispossession. Cement, fundamental for building roads, bridges, and homes, becomes a symbol and ambivalence of progress—at once promising modernization yet revealing corruption, mismanagement, and the failures of officials and contractors. On the streets, the consequences are plain and visible: unfinished roads turn into makeshift rivers of drainage and stagnant rainwater, ditches resemble springs, and puddles swell into small lakes, trampled daily by vehicles and passersby.

It is actually fitting that the film begins in the director’s hometown in Bulacan, a province no stranger to these realities. The province has long lived through the promises and pitfalls of grand infrastructure projects, grounding the film’s critique in lived experience. That resonance feels even sharper in retrospect. In August 2025, San Miguel Corporation Chairman and CEO Ramon Ang vowed to help address flooding across Metro Manila at zero cost to the government. This bold pledge raises an urgent question: what long-term stakes might lie behind Ang’s ‘no cost’ offer of such scale? Remarkably, the short film anticipates and interrogates this very dilemma, even though it was created before the statement was made.

With its restless and experimental structure, Borlagdan laid bare the cost of progress and made a timely and relevant critique of profit disguised as public service, exposing nation-building rhetoric as empire-building in reality. This statement unfolds through the seamless interplay of static and roving shots, shifting from hometown to metropolis, urban landscapes to low-lying coastal areas, intercut with fragmented images, and disquieting soliloquies.

dangpanan
by Stephen Kelly Mahusay

Displacement reflects the systemic failure of institutions to safeguard vulnerable communities. Disasters, whether natural or man-made, often uproot lives and it is the marginalized who faces the harshest blow. They are usually the first casualties, forced to abandon not only their way of life but also teh very places they were born and raised.

Through its fractured form and nearly absent storyline, the film conveys the weight of struggle and the seemingly endless search for a ‘dangpanan’, a Cebuano term meaning safe haven or refuge. Here, the woman and her child embody abandonment and aimless search for a better place. She’s both nameless and unseen by others, wandering through landscapes that feel at once familiar and estranged.

What the film captures with saddening clarity is that displacement is never linear, just like in real life. It has no climax or resolution. The conflict simply remains unresolved. As roads are paved, land is burned for building, and cities rise in the name of progress, those at the economic margins are cast adrift, isolated, and powerless. They persist without agency. They are swept along by a world that keeps moving past them.

The film’s disjointed form mirrors their condition: existence without plot, characters suspended in survival rather than life, a struggle without narrative closure.

Sapatos ni Ibay
by John Neil Diaz and Gerard Paul Gallo

In the highlands of Sinogbuhan, the film brings us into the world of Ibay, a deaf and queer individual whose presence lingers even in silence. Instead of spoken words, Ibay builds meaning through a language shaped by both necessity and imagination. This self-made form of expression becomes a window into how they connect with the people around them, most of all their family. The film lets these moments breathe, showing how stories shared at home give us the deepest sense of who Ibay is. We hear laughter, fragments of memory, and small gestures that together paint a fuller picture of their life. What might have seemed distant becomes intimate, carried by the rhythm of everyday exchanges.

The documentary does not rely on spectacle or large movements; it trusts the small and the ordinary. It allows the beauty of routine such as walking the fields, resting under trees, tending to the household, to reveal truths about Ibay’s lived experience. Their identity unfolds not through declarations, but through the way their family speaks of them, and the way they hold space for Ibay’s difference. This form of storytelling reminds us that dignity and meaning can thrive outside dominant languages. We begin to recognize that silence is not absence, but another kind of presence filled with weight. By the end, we see not only Ibay but also the tender bonds that keep their world alive.

There is also a kind of creativity at play here, subtle but firm, in how the film arranges its pieces. It moves between memory and present time, between silence and voice, not always smooth, sometimes abrupt, but always grounded. The camera does not intrude but sits still, almost patient, as if waiting for life to unfold. In that waiting we see how stories are not only told but lived in gestures and glances. The film asks us to listen with our eyes, to feel meaning where words cannot reach. It may not answer everything about Ibay, but it lets us stand closer to the pulse of their world.

Alamat ng Isdang Kulay Bahaghari
by Avin Dela Cruz

In a world that often narrows the ways people can show themselves, Alamat ng Isdang Kulay Bahaghari follows a group of friends chasing a legend. They hear of a rainbow-colored fish and believe it carries a truth bigger than the tale itself. On their way, they meet a boy named Yoyot, whose story folds into theirs almost by accident. The mix of folklore and fantasy keeps the plot moving, yet the heart of the film sits in something more real. It traces the life of a queer kid learning how to live without shame, even when the world around him pushes him to hide. Watching it feels less like entertainment and more like a whisper that says, “You don’t have to cover who you are.”

Film still from Alamat ng Isdang Kulay Bahaghari

What makes the film stand out is how it moves past the word “acceptance.” It dives into support, showing what happens when friends don’t just put up with you, but stand with you. The question it asks feels simple: what does it mean to be seen without condition? For young queer kids, the fear of being found out can feel constant, each step shadowed by risk. Here, the fear is not erased, but turned into courage. The story offers a reminder that being yourself is not only safe, it is something to be celebrated.

Then there is the fish itself, bright as a secret the world cannot silence. The Isdang Kulay Bahaghari glimmers as more than myth; it acts as a mirror of queer life lived in the open. Its colors don’t soften into the water, they flare and refuse to disappear. To look at it is to see the difference as beauty, not danger. The friends who search for it chase more than folklore; they chase proof that such a world can exist. With its vivid animation and luminous light, the film turns the fish into more than legend; it turns it into a promise.

Ang Saad Nga Bugas
by Mikone Calungsod

What better way to begin a socially reflective experimental piece on political campaign promises and the performative governance of politicians than with the film’s opening images: a grain of rice, the beat of a drum, a rice field, a scarecrow, and the president’s empty pledge of 20-peso rice.

Much like Justine Borlagdan’s Cemento, Ang Saad Nga Bugas directed by Mikone Calungsod finds pure poetry and paradox within the interplay of moving images. The scooping of rice, the cooking of grains in a rice cooker, a clump of rice spoiled by moisture, and the haunting image of a burning scarecrow in the fields set against Bagong Pilipinas hymn. Here, the staple for breakfast, lunch, and dinner of every Filipino becomes not just a symbol of abundance but of uncertainty. The burning scarecrow a reminder of farmers' plight. Fields abandoned. Promises turned to ashes.

Running at just six minutes, the film is tightly packed, sharp and unflinching in its message. The problems experienced by farmers, long neglected by the government, become a perpetual cycle. The film captures this with precision, opening on the image of a single grain of rice and closing on a clump of yellowing rice.

Snafu
by Xydel Vie Saldaña

From the very first scene, Saldaña’s polychromatic visuals already captured the verve of the titular character Snafu. Animated graffiti and hip-hop beats introduce us to the graffiti artist from Cebu whose name comes from a rock band Sticky Fingers track. His emblem, a skull and a blazing sun, captures both vitality and mortality, freedom and defiance.

The film oozes raw and spontaneous energy from the streets. It bleeds colors, smells of spray paint, and screams frustrations. It captures the life of graffiti artists like Snafu, often misunderstood, with so much pathos, insight, and empathy. What is a nuisance to some is actually an aesthetic expression, a political statement. After all, to quote Cesar A. Cruz, art should disturb the comfortable.

Just as importantly, each spray of paint is an invitation for passersbys to see beauty in dead spaces, and for young artists to take up empty wall as their own canvas. Snafu reflects, “What we’re doing right now is just a tease to the authorities—a reflection of how dirty our place is, and of those handling it, because they don’t care about us. The government lacks support for the arts. We put our frustrations on the streets, to inspire others—not for vandalism, but to create something pleasing to the eyes, with stories.”

There is a particular scene that encapsulates the film’s very central themes and the struggle shared by many artists. Snafu compromises for survival, accepting underpaid commissions just to keep creating, yet he insists: “We create our own space, whatever it may be.” It is a bittersweet struggle, yet he rebels through art because it is necessary—a part of his soul, a contribution to his community.

At its heart, the film goes beyond graffiti bombings and tagging walls in public places. It speaks to the act of carving out your own space in a society where the government has neglected culture, and art is still underappreciated and underfunded.

Mga Ulol
by Vince Ivan T. Vesiete

Mga Ulol thrives on chaos, blending satire with the raw absurdity of obsession. The film takes trivial conflicts and blows them into spectacles, making every argument feel bigger than it should. Its humor works because it feels close to the real absurdity of online culture, where clout wars and petty rivalries dominate attention. Instead of depth, spectacle rules, and the audience recognizes the mirror being held up to their feeds. What looks ridiculous on screen is a reflection of how scandal and noise drown out substance in everyday life.

The satire sharpens when the film turns to politics. Characters appear foolish, but they stand in for a nation caught in cycles of poor choices and impulsive leaders. By exaggerating the petty quarrels of its characters, Mga Ulol draws a parallel to ego-driven politics that feels shallow and performative. The message is not hidden; it pushes the viewer to see public life as a theater where entertainment and governance blur. The absurd humor disarms, but the bite of its critique lingers once the laughter fades.

This framing makes the film more than a comedy. It works as a cultural commentary that bridges pop culture with politics. It shows how the same energy that drives viral scandals also powers political drama. Both thrive on attention, not substance, and both collapse into noise when challenged. Mga Ulol captures that cycle with a balance of playfulness and sting.

Senior High School Category

Ang Limang Daan ni Mama
by John Gabriel Rivera

Ang Limangdaan ni Mama builds its tension from a missing five hundred peso bill. The story opens with a family already stretched thin by daily costs and fragile patience. What looks like a small gesture soon grows into a test of trust, where each word and gesture carries weight. Money here is not just cash but a sign of who gives and who withholds in the family. The bill shifts into a symbol of care lost, of responsibility unevenly shared.

Rivera shows that neglect hides not in loud quarrels but in tiny choices that pass without notice. A skipped errand, an ignored request, or a quiet dismissal leaves marks harder to erase than any open fight. The film ties these moments into the slow unraveling of bonds, where love is measured less by what is spoken and more by what is withheld. Care becomes a matter of small, repeated acts that either hold a family together or quietly pull it apart. In this way, Ang Limangdaan ni Mama grows into a study of scarcity, not just of money, but of time, attention, and tenderness.

Dear Tala, Love, Lola Odesa
by Rachelle Magalona and Clarence Barruga

What becomes of love when memory fades? What happens when a grandmother begins to forget the grandchild who still remembers her? These are the questions the film tries to contemplate.

The film opens with ordinary moments, touched with everyday comedy. Lola Odesa goes about her daily chores, often forgetting where she’s left her things. Her grandchild, Tala, often trails behind, helping her find what’s missing, asking questions, and growing increasingly curious about the letters her grandmother writes.

Film still from Dear Tala, Love, Lola Odesa

By the second half, the film shifts into a more dramatic rhythm. Lola Odesa’s memory begins to fade, and what once felt lighthearted now carries heartbreaking weight.

Though simple and familiar in form and narrative, the film captures the warmth of a bond between generations. It is about remembering. It is about the ache of forgetting. It is about love that endures through both. It is a tribute to grandmothers, and a love letter to the grandchildren who keep their memories alive.

Director’s Cut
by Jeron Amit

Director’s Cut starts with students trying their luck in a school film contest. They enter with hope, but they soon clash on how a film should be led. One director tries to hold every frame, every gesture, thinking that mastery means total control. The other leans on trust, giving space for actors and crew to shape the work. Their struggle moves past skill and turns into a lesson about what makes art breathe.

The story shows how control looks safe yet kills the life in art. Each shot, locked to avoid mistakes, starts to feel flat and drained. The director who wants victory misses that flaws are what keep the film alive. An actor forgets a line, a scene shifts by chance, and something real appears. The film says it is not perfection but cracks that let truth through.

The fall of control comes when order matters more than risk. Art does not grow in tight walls but in small chances no one planned. The students watch their project split between fear and freedom. One vision clings to neat images, while the other stumbles forward with trust. In the end, the work that lasts is the flawed one that still feels alive.

The screening and awarding ceremony for this year’s POV XXI film selection took place on August 16, 2025, at the UP Film Institute (UPFI) Film Center Cine Adarna, and was available for streaming on JuanFlix from August 25 to September 7, 2025.